Infections caused by bacteria are a growing medical concern as many of bacterial pathogens have become resistant to various common antibiotics. Such microbes include Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Staphylococcus hemolyticus, Streptococcus pyogenes, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Enterococcus faecalis, Enterococcus faecium, Haemophilus influenzae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Acinetobacter calcoaceticus, Escherichia coli, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, Clostridium difficile and other pathogenic bacteria. See F. D. Lowy, Antimicrobial resistance: the example of Staphylococcus aureus, 111(9) J. CLINICAL INVESTIGATION 1265 (2003); George Talbot et al., Bad Bugs Need Drugs: An Update on the Development Pipeline from the Antimicrobial Availability Task Force of the Infectious Disease Society of America, 42 CLINICAL INFECTIOUS DISEASES 657 (2006); Brad Spellberg et al., The Epidemic of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections: A Call to Action for the Medical Community from the Infectious Disease Society of America, 46 CLINICAL INFECTIOUS DISEASES 155 (2007). In spite of the need for new antibacterial compounds, effective against such multi-drug resistant organisms and the intense efforts applied to this field, very few new antibiotic compounds have been approved by the FDA.
Thus, there remains a need for potent antibiotic agents that inhibit the growth of bacteria including bacteria that are resistant to known antibiotics.